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Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#381

Post by Tomte »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

That may all very well be true, but it still means that the power plant was unsafe.

All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe".

And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens".

Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak accident, it's actually a common cause thing.

It's nice that Fukushima could have survived both the earthquake and the tsunami, had it been built differently.

But it hadn't. And that's why all this "This time everything is safe" is just as unbelievable as over the last decades.

Now, you can certainly say that decarbonization is worth the risk, and I might even be on the fence about it.

But please don't insult the general public's intelligence by ever telling us again that nuclear power is safe and it was only those stupid Russians who totally mismanaged their power plant.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#382

Post by Tomte »

Jaepa wrote: post #170
systemBuilder wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times do we have to hear this "1 in 10,000 year accident!" Argument (3? This guy wants 4!) Before we realize that the idiots designing nuclear power plants don't understand probability?

Woah. Take it easy mate. To be clear there is no "safe" option. But this 60+ year old nuclear facility survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami, and only failed because the placements of the back, back up generators. Other plants (e.g. the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plan) that were closer to the epicenter survived just fine. Old outdate plants aren't perfect, but even still its better than the guar…

> survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami,

You make it sound like this is unbelievably improbable. Like "multiply the probabilities of an earthquake and a tsunami".

In fact, this is a prime example for a common cause failure.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#383

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kortilla wrote: post #324
dirkt wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And th…

>but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. And how many plants failed that were built after the 70s? >The consequences of a disaster are too great Even with the disasters, it kills fewer people than coal even without taking into account the damage from global warming. It’s like refusing to fly because plane crashes stick out in memory and then choosing to drive instead, despite how much more…

No, it's nothing like that - although it might be like refusing to fly in a 737 MAX.

First, any coal analogy is out of date. Only the coal lobby wants to continue burning coal. Everyone else is like "No, that's stupid and self-harming, let's just not."

Secondly, plane crashes don't make entire areas uninhabitable for long periods.

Third, the problem with nuclear isn't the engineering, it's the management. The nuclear industry has proven time and time again that it can't be trusted with nuclear technology. The long list of smaller accidents, cover-ups, and outright lies make it clear that trust has not been earned.

Four, the waste problem still hasn't been solved. I'm not sure how a technology that creates waste that remains toxic for thousands of years can be considered "clean", but the very curious pretence that is somehow clean - or that it can always be buried under a "Keep Out" sign that will somehow remain in place for many centuries - is a handy example of the toxic rhetorical pollution the nuke industry generates.

Fifth, if you remove all subsidies and include end-to-end clean-up costs, nuke power is actually uneconomic, and becoming more and more so.

Apart from that, it's a great idea.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#384

Post by Tomte »

TomMarius wrote: post #89
est31 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't just count deaths and conclude that a nuclear catastrophy isn't that bad. Far more people had to evacuate their home, having to leave most of their belongings behind. And most times with no or too little compensation. Sure, nuclear is prefferable to coal but that doesn't mean that both shouldn't be gotten rid of.

But that kind of reactor is never going to be built again - its design was very outdated and outright bad. Today we can build reactors where any failure that would result in an explosion of any kind is physically nearly impossible.

That exact same argument was made back then.

You need to accept that all trust is lost. You cannot take backsies every few decades and expect people to trust you that this time you really know what you#re talking about.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#385

Post by Cass »

kmlx wrote: post #359
antt wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it odd how the people talking about climate change being an extinction level event aren't even prepared to execute a few dozen CEOs of large fossil fuel companies. If the fate of the world is in question then Ted Kaczynski is a rational individual who reacted with restraint.

one small correction: the fate of the world isn’t in question. it’s the fate of humans that is. meaning: the planet has seen several extinction events. it will survive anything we throw at it. but humans need to start building rockets and space stations asap if they want to survive.

I'm always baffled by the idea that we need to get people living in space for the human race to survive climate chance or other catastrophes. What do you think we could possibly do to the Earth that would make it less habitable than space? Even in the worst, worst case scenario, the Earth's gonna be left with some amount of oxygen-containing atmosphere, arable soil, gravity, and survivable if possibly uncomfortably hot or cold temperatures. Any station we could possibly build to withstand the temperatures and vacuum of space would be much more easily built on Earth.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#386

Post by Tempest1981 »

mjevans wrote: post #274
chii wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we (the human race) have learned. yet, this is specific to this one incident, one specific threat. The issue is more likely to be systemic. Once a production system is up and running, it is not consistantly being improved and iterated upon, but instead left to stagnate technologically (and in this case, in safety in light of new research etc). But the argument is that such level of continuous improvement/iterat…

Thus regulate mandatory re-certified every 10 years. Also that such process must involve meeting or exceeding //current// engineering standards and safety, with the potential for limited exceptions if approved by need and actively in progress plans for achieving the specifications.

Can't a new president quickly overturn such regulations?

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#387

Post by andness »

dirkt wrote: post #278
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And th…

I agree with you that I don't think we can make nuclear safe. But if the choice seems to be between millions of deaths from global warming or thousands of deaths from nuclear, isn't the latter vastly preferable? Shouldn't we set out and build out nuclear to steer us away from the edge, and then worry about better solutions once we're safe?

I suspect the reason people don't buy this argument is that they don't truly believe global warming is as bad as they say. We have a history of solving problems in the past, so we'll solve this one too. There's no need to panic.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#389

Post by Tomte »

BurningFrog wrote: post #223
hesk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too simplistic. Retiring nuclear power plants has been the long term goal of the German anti-nuclear movement since the 70s. They were an important faction in the founding of the Green Party. When the Green party came into power in 1998 in a coalition government, they passed a law to retire all nuclear power plants by restricting the remaining energy output they could produce. BTW, this was done in consensus w…

> Then Fukushima happened, [...], and Andrea Merkel changed her opinion. Didn't you say the same as OP, with a lot more words?

No. He explained that there is a huge societal movement behind that. OP made it sound like Merkel decided on a personal whim.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#390

Post by ace_of_spades »

Tomte wrote: post #381
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

That may all very well be true, but it still means that the power plant was unsafe . All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe". And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens". Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak a…

Disclaimer: I am not really pro- or con- nuclear energy but try to keep an open mind.

How does what you are saying not apply to any other technology? Cars are “save” but kill more people than all nuclear power plants and accidents combined. Still we say to ourselves we can deal with the risk, which is obviously the case for lot’s of cases but might not be in some exceptions.

I think your reaction seems a little bit too emotional to an interesting and seemingly informative (haven’t fact checked his claims) personal perspective. The problem with discussions about nuclear energy is that there is a strong dogma towards openly thinking about the costs/risk/benefits in the political sphere. In Germany postponing our nuclear exit could buy us some time to get coal offline earlier and provide some stability to the grid. Ironically, the green party would never consider such a move due to ideological (and historical) reasons.

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